


Growing Pains

by FoxGlade



Category: Storm Hawks
Genre: Gen, Team as Family, these kids should have WAY more issues than they do
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-25
Updated: 2016-05-25
Packaged: 2018-06-09 23:51:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,717
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6929431
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FoxGlade/pseuds/FoxGlade
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They're four kids, a technical adult, and a sky rodent, growing up on a flying battleship that could fall out of the sky at any second. But y'know. It's all good.</p><p>(six snapshots of life on the Condor)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Growing Pains

**Author's Note:**

> and after almost a year of sitting in my wip folder, here it finally is!!! an ode to my fave sky kids, the 14yr olds who have fun adventures in a terrifying dystopian wasteland setting. i actually wrote most of this a year ago, but recently got back into storm hawks and decided i wanted to publish it, so i added some more. so if the style changes at some point, u know why.
> 
> enjoy the lowkey finn/junko, bcause its not popular enough, and some highkey piper/being a lesbian, bcause thats canon. any and all dragon booster references are intentional and mostly for my own amusement.
> 
> blame as always to shena, who is responsible for changing my childhood opinion of this series. (did u know i used to hate this show as a kid?? how the turntables.)

Although this region of Atmos is fairly quiet, the markets on Terra Vendre are always bustling, or so it seems to Piper. She nudges her way through the crowds slowly, taking the time to admire the bright colours and chattering voices in the stalls around her. The scents of ripe fruit and fresh leather fill the air, and she breathes it in. It’s easy to forget these small signs of civilization, living isolated on Terra Neverlandis – not that she’d change any of it.

A flash of fiery red catches her eye, and she wanders over to a booth full of flowers, spilling out of tubs in a riot of colour. Even so, the bright red petals of a curvy, strong-looking flower stand out boldly.

“Looking for something for your girlfriend, maybe?” the girl running the stand asks, a smile quirking the corner of her lips. She can’t be more than a few years older than Piper herself.

“Ah, no,” Piper says, hoping her blush isn’t visible on her dark cheeks. “I thought- these ones.” She points at the red flowers and continues, “My brother would like them, I think. Do you sell the seeds for them?”

The girl looks at her with silver eyes and an expression that screams ‘awww’. “Not here, honey,” she says, then adds, “Margo down the street does, though. Ask her for the red eleanors, and tell her Myna sent you with a discount.” She winks, then turns to another customer, leaving Piper to pick her way down to Margo’s stall, still flustered.

Finn will probably complain about wasting garden space, but she thinks Aerrow will understand. It’ll be worth a few less carrots to see the bright red flowers with their pale green speckles in full bloom.

 

 

 

Of all the things Finn has grown used to in his life, the sight of Aerrow arguing with Radarr is still not one of them.

“It’s not _reckless_ if I know what I’m doing!” Aerrow insists. Radarr makes a growling sort of shriek-y noise and shakes his finger up at Aerrow, which is more intimidating than it should be, given that Radarr is about half their height.

“Says you,” Aerrow huffs, which seems like a completely random response to Finn. Piper walks up silently beside him as Radarr chitters.

“Can he… actually understand him?” she whispers.

“Aerrow or Radarr?” he replies, slightly louder. The two don’t even notice, now speaking over each other – or, well, Aerrow is speaking, Radarr is just making this low growling sound and repeatedly stomping his foot. To be fair, it gets the message across pretty clearly.

“Both, I guess,” Piper says. Finn just shrugs.

“Dunno,” he says, with the carefree attitude of someone who has accepted the fact that some things in life are inexplicable and not meant to be examined. “Hey, while they’re distracted, wanna finish off the last of the drapple fruit pie?”

 

 

 

“It’s nice to see a group of young people where romantic troubles never seem to be an issue,” Starling says, a while after they finish their game.

Piper lifts he chin off her head and tears her eyes away from Starling’s _(beautiful)_ face to look over at the people she happily calls her family; Aerrow, leaning back in his chair at the table with closed eyes, Radarr curled around his shoulders; Finn and Junko, playing some kind of low-key combat game that seems more like an excuse for Finn to put his hands on Junko’s shoulder than anything else; and Stork, who is currently muttering to himself at the wheel of the Condor, glancing over at them occasionally.

“I can honestly say it’s never come up,” Piper says.

 

 

 

The first few seconds after he snaps out of a nightmare are always disorienting, but even as Finn sits up and gasps for breath, he still doesn’t know where he is. His heart, already racing from the dream, speeds up even more. Did they find him? Have they finally taken him back? Where’s Aerrow?

But after another breathless moment, he finally recognises his surroundings – the room he’d picked out on the Condor, barely awake enough to take any of it in. The Condor. The Cyclonian Youth Brigade, finding the ship, fighting, leaving Terra Neverlandis forever with Stork and taking Junko with them - safe.

But still…

When he knocks on Aerrow’s door and looks inside, Aerrow is awake, looking at him with slitted eyes. “Hey,” he rumbles, sounding mostly asleep. Finn shifts, almost apologises and turns away, but Aerrow is already rolling over and throwing back the covers, smiling slightly, without ever disturbing Radarr, who’s snoring on the other pillow.

“Thanks,” Finn says, sliding under the covers and pulling them up to his chin. Aerrow shrugs, yawns, and settles on his back, not reacting when Finn curls up closer to him.

“S’okay, brother,” he mumbles, then yawns again. He’s asleep in seconds, and Finn closes his eyes, the nightmare already a distant memory.

 

 

 

Stork’s latest pet is much cuter than the spider, at least.

“It’s not another dragon, right?” Finn asks, hiding behind Junko a little bit. Stork hums and continues brushing the scaly animal’s spinal mane with a toothbrush. Piper is pretty sure it’s Aerrow’s.

“It’s a Draconium tracker,” she says, offering a finger for it to sniff. “They’re descendent from a common ancestor as dragons. Are you sure it’s safe to have aboard?”

“Safe!” Stork exclaims. “Is it safe that the cooling units have been on the verge of failing for weeks? Or that Junko is still allowed access to the kitchen?”

“Hey,” Junko says. Finn pats him on the shoulder.

“Do you want us to help you name it?” he asks. “I got a great one, just listen—”

“Is it Finn Junior?” Piper asks. Finn makes a _pshaw_ sound.

“Course not!” he says. “How unoriginal do you think I am?” A pause. “It’s Finnster II, obviously.”

Before Piper can shoot down that suggestion, there’s a deep groan from the engines, and the floor beneath their feet sways a little. As they all fling out their arms to try and balance, a crash sounds from the next room, and Aerrow pops his head through the door.

“Uhh, guys?” he says. “I’m pretty sure we’re about five minutes from crashing, here.”

“What’s new?” Junko says mournfully, but they all run for their stations anyway.

“Oh, and by the way,” Aerrow says as they dart through the corridors, “we should definitely call the dragon PowerFist.”

“Really?” Piper says skeptically over the sounds of Finn’s enthusiastic agreement. “It doesn’t even have fists!”

“Yeah, but it sounds _awesome!_ ” Finn crows. He takes on a serious tone and says, “’We got Cyclonians heading in from the north – time to bring out _PowerFist!_ ’”

“It’s a Draconium tracker, not an actual dragon, Finn,” Piper says. “It can’t even take down large birds.”

“I know that,” Finn says, but the disappointment in his voice says otherwise. They all skid to a stop outside the boiler room. “Anyway, all in favour of PowerFist?”

It’s only the three of them. Finn and Aerrow both raise their hands. Piper rolls her eyes. “Fine,” she says, “but you have to ask Stork before you start calling it that.”

“Dude, he’s gonna love it,” Finn says gleefully. And then they enter the boiler room and get to work.

 

 

 

The Condor seems to be running smooth enough for now, so Finn is taking the opportunity to explore. It seems like everyone else (save Stork, of course) is as well – he’d seen Piper inspecting some wall hangings earlier, and he’d run into Junko around what had looked like the kitchens. Junko had said he’d love to cook something, if they can find some decent supplies.

Finn hopes he’s good at it. He’s starting to really like that guy.

As he passes one of the doors in the corridor, he hears a small scuffle from inside, and definitely does not jump. “Please don’t be a rat,” he whispers, closing his eyes and psyching himself up to push the door open. It couldn’t be a ghost, right? Oh man, a ghost would be even _worse_ than a rat…

But when he finally opens the door, slowly, it’s just Aerrow, sitting on an ancient-looking bed against the wall.

“Oh sweet, you found the bedrooms?” he says. Aerrow doesn’t look up from the thing he’s holding in his lap – a piece of paper? Or—

He moves closer, and suddenly he can see why Aerrow doesn’t seem in the mood for anything. “Oh,” he says, sitting down on the bed next to him. “Sorry, dude.”

“I guess this was his room,” Aerrow says. The photo is old, faded and crumpled and torn at one edge, but the colours are still bright enough to make the man at the centre of the group stand out. He’s the only one with dark red hair and green eyes. “It was just on the floor. I think it fell off the wall, at some point.”

Neither of them had remembered their parents, growing up. They’d both had vague memories of someone, but it was generic; nothing specific. If Finn had somehow found out that one of his parents was a famous warrior, and then saw a picture of them…

There wasn’t really much you could say to that. He nudges his shoulder against Aerrow’s, and together they sit in silence.

Piper finds them, after a while, and comes to sit on Aerrow’s other side. Finn knows she remembers her parents well, but they’re all gone now, so he thinks she gets it. Radarr arrives a minute or two later, senses the atmosphere, and immediately jumps to curl up on Aerrow’s lap.

For a while, it’s just the four of them again, even as they stare at the evidence of why things will never be the same again.

But then Stork calls over the ship-wide comms that a Zygerrian Deathball has snuck aboard to release its foul smell and smother them to death, and upon racing to the source they discover it’s just Junko trying to cook (to Stork’s great disappointment), and… it’s nothing like life on Terra Neverlandis. But it might even be better.

It’s not the four of them anymore. They’re Storm Hawks now, all six of them, and if nothing else, it’s definitely going to be an adventure.


End file.
